William Breeze

Caliph was a designation given to McMurtry by Crowley in relation to the continuing office OHO of O.T.O., of which Crowley was the ultimate religious head after taking over leadership of the order from its founder Theodore Reuss in 1923.

According to Crowley, caliph is the elected spiritual and organizational worldwide leader of O.T.O. and is his successor.

A lineage of caliphs carrying religious and organisational significance were designated by Crowley.

The caliphs, as successors to Crowley, lead the order after his death.

Breeze came from a military family.

Son of a US Army serviceman, he was born in Paris, France, where his father, Colonel Breeze, was on a tour of duty.

Breeze spent his childhood accompanying his father, who had a distinguished military career, on many tours of duty across the United States, staying with him at various US military bases, including Fort Meade where a remote viewing program took place; Nellis Air Force Base, located in close proximity to Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base in Nevada, which is a highly classified remote detachment 83 miles (134 km) north-northwest of Las Vegas closely linked to UFO phenomena; Fort Bragg, where "Project Jedi" was run by Special Forces; and Montauk Air Force Station, at the eastern tip of Long Island, which was later associated with supposed time travel experiments as part of the Montauk Project.

Motta was a disciple of Karl Germer whom he met in 1953 and his A∴A∴ work was also supervised by Germer.

Motta, in turn, took on his own students, despite not being formally qualified to do so, including James Wasserman and J. Daniel Gunther, both of whom he expelled from the order.

William Breeze (born 1955), also known by his neo-Gnostic bishop title of Tau Silenus, is an American writer and publisher on magick and philosophy.

He is the Sovereign Patriarch, or supreme governing cleric, of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.), the liturgical arm of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.), of which he is the current Outer Head of the Order (OHO), also known as Frater Superior, as well as caliph, the order's international leader.

In this capacity he is a leading editor of the occult works of Aleister Crowley, the founder of the philosophy and religion of Thelema, who is regarded as its prophet.

Under the name Hymenaeus Beta he is the second caliph to lead the traditional, orthodox, or "Caliphate" OTO (as opposed to the derivative organizations the Typhonian Order (formerly known as the Typhonian O.T.O.) of Kenneth Grant and the Society O.T.O. of Marcelo Ramos Motta, and is the direct successor of Grady McMurtry (Hymenaeus Alpha), who was the first of the caliphs and second of the overall leaders, or Outer Heads—directly after Crowley's immediate successor Karl Germer—to follow after Crowley in his role as leader of the order.

In the 1970s Breeze studied literature at Harvard University.

In late 1970s, Breeze helped to publish Aleister Crowley's Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law; Breeze was co-owner of the publishing company, 93 Publishing.

During McMurtry's governance of OTO in the 1970s, the Gnostic Catholic Church and OTO functioned as separate organisations.

Breeze was consecrated by E.G.C.'s bishop Jack Hogg as Tau Silenus on August 12, 1974.

Hogg was a bishop of the Gnostic Church of Thelema whose lineage could be traced directly to J. Doinel, one of the founders of the Gnostic tradition, who also consecrated Aleister Crowley.

Motta's A∴A∴ movement was first formally announced in the early January 1976, when Motta's edition of the Commentaries of AL with introduction by James Wasserman went to print.

McMurtry served as caliph from 1978, when he re-founded the defunct O.T.O., until 1985 and Breeze has served as caliph from 1986 until the present.

In 1979, when Breeze was 24 years old, he met Grady McMurtry.

Ten years earlier, McMurtry and his wife, known as Soror Meral, had re-established Ordo Templi Orientis by invoking the emergency orders from Crowley given to McMurtry in the “Caliphate letters”, which gave McMurtry authority (subject to previous OHO's approval) to "take charge of the whole work of the Order in California to reform the Order".

In 1982 McMurtry granted Breeze a charter to form an Ordo Templi Orientis lodge in Canada.

In 1983 Breeze founded Phoenix lodge in Montreal becoming a Master of it.

McMurtry served as the head of Ordo Templi Orientis until his death in 1985.

In that year, Breeze succeeded McMurtry as Acting Outer Head of OTO, after all active IX-degree members met in order to elect McMurtry's successor.

He was nominated by Helen Parsons-Smith, a widow of Wilfred Talbot Smith, who was a founder of Agape Lodge.

Upon his election, Breeze assumed the responsibility of raising the O.T.O. to greater heights and of reconstituting the A∴A∴, with a view to re-establish two orders the way Crowley originally envisaged.

Over the next decade, Breeze spent his time establishing International Headquarters and chartering new Lodges.

By the end of the twentieth century, the organization had grown to several thousand members.

After his election as the Outer Head of the O.T.O. in 1985, Breeze sought to rebuild the A∴A∴ so that both orders could again operate in the way Crowley intended.

In 1986 Breeze succeeded McMurtry as the Patriarch of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the liturgical arm of O.T.O. As a contemporary occult Church, it exists as an integral part of OTO.

In 1986, Breeze co-joined the separate Gnostic Catholic Church with OTO.

Under his leadership the Church has expanded greatly, growing in several countries.

Having spent the years immediately following his election giving most of his attention to the O.T.O activity, in the summer of 1992, together with J. Daniel Gunther who was involved exclusively with the A∴A∴, and other students of Marcelo Motta, Breeze renewed the A∴A∴ activity which at that point was dormant.

Starting in 2005, Breeze begun chartering new international Grand Lodges, including those of Australia and United Kingdom, the latter covering England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, plus British Crown Dependencies.

Despite the O.T.O. formalising itself with regulations and policies, Breeze allowed the leadership in local areas the freedom to experiment with tactics for growing the organisation.

In England several new O.T.O and E.G.C bodies were chartered by the United Kingdom Grand Lodge, including lodges and camps in Bristol, Hastings and Leeds.

On October 10, 2014, Breeze was unanimously re-elected de jure Outer Head of the Order by a council of Grand Masters.

On May 16, 2015, the organisation celebrated 30 years of his governing of OTO.